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Problems creating and restoring drive image

Discussion in 'TiVo Series 1 - UK' started by themonk, Mar 20, 2011.

  1. Mar 20, 2011 #1 of 5
    themonk

    themonk New Member

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    Aug 27, 2004
    London, UK

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    All,

    I'm trying to create a backup image of my S1 UK Tivo drive and not having much luck. The drive I have is a 300GB WD, the target drive is a 300GB Maxtor. I could just use DD to dump from the current drive to the other but wanted to create a drive image as a backup.

    I'm using the following to create the backup:
    mkdir /mnt/dos
    mount /dev/hde5 /mnt/dos
    mfsbackup –l 32 -6so /mnt/dos/tivoxxxxxx.bak /dev/hdc

    (where tivoxxxxxx.bak is the date of backup, ie. tivo160311.bak and hde5 is a FAT32 partition to create the backup image on)

    Everything seems to run successfully with no errors.

    When restoring the image, I've tried:
    mkdir /mnt/dos
    mount /dev/hde5 /mnt/dos
    restore -s 150 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivoxxxxxx.bak /dev/hdc
    and tried
    restore -r 4 -s 150 -zpi /mnt/dos/tivoxxxxxx.bak /dev/hdc

    Again, both run successfully with no errors.
    I then run copykern to support the larger drive, then put the new drive back into the Tivo.
    All I get is a green light on the front of the Tivo and a grey screen but nothing else, not even a 'Powering Up' screen. I've tried another 300GB WD drive with the same results.
    The CD I'm using is PTV MFS Tools 2 (with LBA 48 Support) but have also tried Steve Conrads - MFS Tools 2 CD as well, with the same results.

    The PC I'm using is an Asus A7V motherboard and the drive I'm backing up to is on the UDMA 100 controller, would this be an issue?

    Any thoughts would be much appriciated.
    Thanks.
     
  2. Mar 20, 2011 #2 of 5
    mikerr

    mikerr TiVoCentral.co.uk

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    Jun 2, 2005
    Lancashire, UK
    Your commands look right.

    Newer WD IDE drives have an incompatible IDE controller to the TiVo.

    They'll present exactly that behavior - not "seen" by tivo (Tivo will normally show that grey screen on any drive even without a tivo image).

    Similar issue with IDE-SATA convertors (many/most don't work with tivo)
    - its currently best to stick to the Startech IDE2SATA adaptor, and any SATA drive.
     
  3. Mar 20, 2011 #3 of 5
    themonk

    themonk New Member

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    Aug 27, 2004
    London, UK
    Thanks mikerr for your reply, very interesting, didn't know that newer WD drives had this issue but doesn't explain why the Maxtor also cannot boot. It's been tested as a Windows drive with no problems and has been 'unlocked' after being in the Tivo.
    What do you recommend as a SATA drive >300GB?

    Regards.
     
  4. Mar 20, 2011 #4 of 5
    mikerr

    mikerr TiVoCentral.co.uk

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    Jun 2, 2005
    Lancashire, UK
    Never start a PC into windows with a tivo drive attached - windows sees it as an unformatted drive and silently kills the tivo boot sector :(

    That can be fixed with MakeTivoBootable, but its often easier to just reimage from original.

    RE: WD incompatibility - I think anything older than 2010 should be ok.
     
  5. Mar 20, 2011 #5 of 5
    themonk

    themonk New Member

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    Aug 27, 2004
    London, UK

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    Ok, Finally got it all working and restoring to the Maxtor drive.
    It turned out to be the backup operation, not the restore.

    The command line that worked is:
    mfsbackup -6so /mnt/dos/tivoxxxxxx.bak /dev/hdc
    The solution is to drop the 'l 32' option; no idea what it does or why it's there but it seems to prevent important data being copied to the backup image.

    The 300GB Maxtor drive now has a working backup :)

    mikerr, yes, my WD 300GB is December 2010 which does not work but my working WD drive is October 2006.
     

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